Subject: Bilateral Relations

The article highlights the unprecedented engagement among the countries of West Asia even among the rivals and explains its significance.

New diplomatic engagements in West Asia

• Recently, there have been interactions between senior Saudi and Iranian officials, the first since diplomatic ties were broken in January 2016.
• Following the removal of the diplomatic and economic blockade on Qatar that was imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, Doha has made efforts to mend ties with both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, in tandem with similar initiatives of its doctrinal and political ally, Turkey.
• On May 5, Turkey and Egypt had their first diplomatic meeting in Cairo after they had broken diplomatic ties in 2013.
• The two countries, on opposite sides on almost all regional issues, are now exploring how to address their differences.

Driving force behind these engagements

• The driving force behind these unprecedented engagements is the advent of the Biden administration at the helm of politics in the United States.
• He has taken a tough line on Saudi Arabia, scrutinising its human rights record and opposition to the war in Yemen.
• Besides concerns in West Asian capitals, the broader message is that the U.S. is now likely to be less engaged with the region’s quarrels.
• These signals of new U.S. policies have occurred even as the novel coronavirus pandemic is devastating West Asia.
• Finally, one major factor is the recognition that the ongoing regional conflicts, in Syria, Yemen and Libya, despite the massive death and destruction, have yielded no military outcome and now demand fresh diplomatic approaches.

Long way to go in resolving differences

• Egypt remains uneasy about Turkey’s ties with the Brotherhood and its regional ambitions.
• Saudi Arabia has similar concerns about Turkey’s doctrinal affiliations and its relations with Iran.
• There are difficulties in reshaping Saudi-Iran relations as well.
• Iran may ease the pressure on the kingdom in Yemen and gradually yield ground in Iraq.
• However, Syria will test their diplomatic skills as they explore how to accommodate their competing strategic interests in that devastated country.

Historic period for West Asian diplomacy

• This is truly a historic period for West Asian diplomacy.
• The major states are displaying unprecedented self-confidence in pursuing initiatives without the involvement of western powers that have dominated regional affairs for at least a couple of centuries.
• This has left a pervasive sense of insecurity across West Asia and made the countries dependent on western alliances to ensure their interests.
• This has left a pervasive sense of insecurity across West Asia and made the countries dependent on western alliances to ensure their interests.

Role for India

• Given that regional contentions are inter-connected, third-party facilitators will be needed to promote mutual confidence and prepare the ground for a comprehensive regional security arrangement.
• This will bring together regional and external states with a stake in West Asia security.
• This arrangement will have provisions for participating states to uphold regional peace and promote mutually beneficial cooperation in energy, economic and logistical connectivity areas.
• Given its close ties with all the regional states, India is well-placed to build an association of like-minded states — Japan, Russia, South Korea — to shape and pursue such an initiative for West Asian peace.

Conclusion

These new diplomatic engagements with erstwhile rivals could in time overturn existing regional alignments and possibly end ongoing conflicts.

The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of the stand-off with China last year and offers key lessons in managing the strategic competition with China.

Year after stand-off

• After over a year, the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh shows no signs of resolution.
• More broadly, the India-China bilateral relationship has ruptured.
• Reversing a long-held policy, India will no longer overlook the problematic border dispute for the sake of a potentially lucrative wider relationship.
• Even if disengagement continues, the relationship will remain vulnerable to destabilising disruptions.
• Therefore, the Ladakh crisis offers India three key lessons in managing the intensifying strategic competition with China.

Three key lessons

1) Military strategy based on denial are more useful

•  Military strategies based on denial are more useful than strategies based on punishment.
•  The Indian military’s standing doctrine calls for deterring adversaries with the threat of massive punitive retaliation for any aggression, capturing enemy territory as bargaining leverage in post-war talks.
• But this did not deter China from launching unprecedented incursions in May 2020.
• In contrast, the Indian military’s high-water mark in the crisis was an act of denial — its occupation of the heights on the Kailash Range on its side of the LAC in late August.
• This action served to deny that key terrain to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and gave the Indian Army a stronger defensive position.
• A doctrinal focus on denial will give the Indian military greater capacity to thwart future land grabs across the LAC.
• Over time, improved denial capabilities may allow India to reduce the resource drain of the increased militarisation of the LAC.

2) Political cost matters more

• China is more likely to be deterred or coerced with the threat of political costs, rather than material costs.
• The material burden of the crisis would not disrupt its existing priorities.
• In contrast, India successfully raised the risks of the crisis for China through its threat of a political rupture, not military punishment.
• A permanently hostile India or an accidental escalation to conflict were risks that China, having achieved its tactical goals in the crisis, assessed were an unnecessary additional burden.
• The corollary lesson is that individual powers, even large powers such as India, will probably struggle to shift Beijing’s calculus alone.
• Against the rising behemoth, only coordinated or collective action is likely to be effective.

3) India should accept more risk on LAC

• India should consider accepting more risk on the LAC in exchange for long-term leverage and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
• From the perspective of long-term strategic competition, the future of the Indian Ocean Region is more consequential and more uncertain than the Himalayan frontier.
• At the land border, the difficult terrain and more even balance of military force means that each side could only eke out minor, strategically modest gains at best.
• In contrast, India has traditionally been the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Region and stands to cede significant political influence and security if it fails to answer the rapid expansion of Chinese military power.

Conclusion

As these three lessons show, the future of the strategic competition is not yet written. If India’s leaders honestly and critically evaluate the crisis, it may yet help to actually brace India’s long-term position against China.

Foreign policy consequences

• The devastation caused by the second Covid wave prompted India to accept foreign aid after a gap of 17 years.
• This is bound to have far-reaching strategic implications for India.
• As a direct consequence of the pandemic, India’s claim to regional primacy and leadership will take a major hit.
• India ‘leading power’ aspirations will be dented, and accentuate its domestic political contestations.
• These in turn will impact the content and conduct of India’s foreign policy in the years to come.

What would be the strategic implications?

1) Impact on India’s regional primacy

• COVID 2.0 has quickened the demise of India’s regional primacy.
• India’s geopolitical decline is likely to begin in the neighbourhood itself.
• India’s traditional primacy in the region was built on a mix of material aid, political influence and historical ties.
• Its political influence is steadily declining, its ability to materially help the neighbourhood will shrink in the wake of COVID-19.
• Its historical ties alone may not do wonders to hold on to a region hungry for development assistance and political autonomy.

2) Impact on India’s great power aspiration

•  India aspires to be a leading power, rather than just a balancing power.
• While the Indo-Pacific is geopolitically keen and ready to engage with India, the pandemic could adversely impact India’s ability and desire to contribute to the Indo-Pacific and the Quad.
• COVID-19, for instance, will prevent any ambitious military spending or modernisation plans.
• Covid-19 will also limit the country’s attention on global diplomacy and regional geopolitics, be it Afghanistan or Sri Lanka or the Indo-Pacific.
• With reduced military spending and lesser diplomatic attention to regional geopolitics, New Delhi’s ability to project power and contribute to the growth of the Quad will be uncertain.

3) Domestic political contestation  and its impact on strategic ambition

• Domestic political contestations in the wake of the COVID-19 devastation in the country could also limit India’s strategic ambitions.
• General economic distress, a fall in foreign direct investment and industrial production, and a rise in unemployment have already lowered the mood in the country.
• A depressed economy, politically volatile domestic space combined with a lack of elite consensus on strategic matters would hardly inspire confidence in the international system about India.

4) Impact on India-China equation

• From competing with China’s vaccine diplomacy a few months ago, New Delhi today is forced to seek help from the international community.
• China has, compared to most other countries, emerged stronger in the wake of the pandemic.
• The world, notwithstanding its anti-China rhetoric, will continue to do business with Beijing — it already has been, and it will only increase.
• Claims that India could compete with China as a global investment and manufacturing destination would be dented.
• India’s ability to stand up to China stands vastly diminished today: in material power, in terms of balance of power considerations, and political will.

5) Depressed foreign policy

• Given the much reduced political capital within the government to pursue ambitious foreign policy goals, the diplomatic bandwidth for expansive foreign policy goals would be limited.
• This, however, might take the aggressive edge off of India’s foreign policy.
• Less aggression could potentially translate into more accommodation, reconciliation and cooperation especially in the neighbourhood, with Pakistan on the one hand and within the broader South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) framework on the other.
•  COVID-19 has forced us to reimagine, to some extent at least, the friend enemy equations in global geopolitics.
• While the United States seemed hesitant, at least initially, Russia was quick to come to India’s aid. 

6) Implications for strategic autonomy

• The pandemic would, at the very least indirectly, impact India’s policy of maintaining strategic autonomy.
• As pointed out above, the strategic consequences of the pandemic are bound to shape and structure India’s foreign policy choices as well as constrain India’s foreign policy agency.
• It could, for instance, become more susceptible to external criticism for, after all, India cannot say ‘yes’ to just aid and ‘no’ to criticism.

Consider the question “Examine the strategic implications of Covid for India.” 

Way forward

• COVID-19 will also do is open up new regional opportunities for cooperation especially under the ambit of SAARC.
• India might do well to get the region’s collective focus on ‘regional health multilateralism’ to promote mutual assistance and joint action on health emergencies such as this.
• Classical geopolitics should be brought on a par with health diplomacy, environmental concerns and regional connectivity in South Asia.

Conclusion

While the outpouring of global aid to India shows that the world realises India is too important to fail, the international community might also reach the conclusion that post-COVID-19 India is too fragile to lead and be a ‘leading power’.